Raise A Glass to Scotland's Contribution to European Wine

Small wine producers across Europe will be raising a glass to the University of Glasgow this New Year for helping raise the profile of their high quality products.

Glasgow Research Fellow, Dr. Pamela Clayton, led a collaborative project with 10 European partners called "Marketing European Wine: training for micro producers," which aimed to provide small wine producers in emerging wine areas of Europe with training in marketing tailored to their specific needs.

After extensive consultation with the wine producers themselves, the project has culminated in a multilingual website—http://www.gla.ac.uk/wine—which includes information about marketing and a free course that can be undertaken as self-directed learning or with the help of the appropriate partner institution.

Clayton explains why the project was needed: "The European wine industry faces increasing challenges from newer wine-producing parts of the world. One of its problems, especially for small wine producers making good quality wine, has been a lack of marketing know-how. The project was designed to overcome this by developing training to help producers find more effective and innovative ways of publicising and selling their products."

Small wine producers across Europe were surveyed to better understand their marketing needs, the resources available to them and their priorities and difficulties. The overall aim is to help raise the profile of small wineries and wine-producing cooperatives and improve sales of their high quality products.

"Marketing for small wine producers was a problem across Europe so the partnership spanned Sweden, Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, Romania, Slovenia, Italy and Spain. The University of Glasgow was promoter and coordinator of the project as well as representing English wine (there was no Scottish wine when we started but now there are two vineyards). The expert partner providing marketing training was the University of Alicante," Clayton says.

"Marketing European Wine: training for micro producers" was coordinated by the University of Glasgow under the European Leonardo da Vinci program (development and innovation).